1. Field of the Invention
The present application relates to compiling and reporting data associated with activity on a network server and more particularly to generating and processing first party cookies for use with third party tracking services for the purposes of compiling and reporting web traffic data from visits by client nodes to a web site to be tracked.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The need for and benefits of tracking visitors' behaviors on a company's web site are well-established. Such information is indispensable to site design, marketing and sales strategies, and, eventually, maximizing return-on-investment for web-related expenses.
Establishing and maintaining a unique identifier for each visitor is fundamental to such tracking. A unique identifier provides the means for counting the number of unique visitors as well as for grouping behaviors by visitor and analyzing traffic by visitor segment. It behooves us to have a robust and accurate means for managing these identifiers.
The two main methods for collecting web traffic data are web server log file analysis and client-side tagging employing a third-party service. These differ, in large regard, in that the log files are created and analyzed by the same organization, whereas with JavaScript tagging it is most often a third-party service that analyzes the data.
In the first method (log files), one analyzes the log files from a web site's server, using data gleaned from that file to identify each visitor and attribute actions to them. Various techniques have been used (e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 6,112,238) including using the IP address of the visitor (sometimes in combination with the HTTP user agent field) and using an HTTP cookie. It is generally accepted that using cookies is the most accurate technique since cookies are distributed by the web site itself and can be guaranteed to be unique, and because they do not vary with dynamically assign IP addresses (DHCP) or with new installations of browsing software.
In the second method (client-side script), the web site includes a bit of client-side script (typically, JavaScript) in each page. This script executes on the visitor's computer resulting in an HTTP request to a third-party tracking service. The tracking service typically places its own cookie on the visitor's computer to uniquely identify the visitor. The salient difference between this cookie and one placed by the web site itself is the domain that owns the cookie. The tracking service cookie is a “third-party cookie” whereas the cookie from the web site is a “first-party cookie”.
The problem with third-party cookies is that they are recognizable as coming from a third-party and they are generally understood to have no purpose useful to the visitor—they only serve to track the visitor. A first-party cookie, on the other hand, is used for many purposes that aid the visitor in browsing. It might contain shopping cart information, preferences, automatic login data, etc. As far as the visitor is concerned, third-party cookies are expendable whereas first-party cookies are useful.
Many web users are concerned with privacy, especially when it involves personally identifiable information such as email addresses, social security numbers, phone numbers, etc. With this in mind, web users either block the use of third-party cookies or manually or automatically remove such cookie on a periodic basis. Of course, removing third-party visitor-tracking cookies diminishes the efficacy of the tracking technique in that it reduces the accuracy of the counts based upon those cookies. Web users are less inclined to delete first-party cookies, since those cookies are perceived to be helpful.
Accordingly, the need remains for implementing tracking techniques that overcome the reliance on third-party cookies for web traffic tracking.